speaking of which, have you heard about the new interactive touch-screen table tops? you can read the paper online while you're eating breakfast, or look at digital photos, and get this: you can lay your cell phone on the table top and drag-and-drop song files into it.

too damn cool. but they start at $10000... 

Unfortunately, the Microsoft Surface won't be out for another few years, and they have yet to give it a real practical use... plus, very few people have $15,000 lying around to go buy something that looks cool.

In response to the main post, yes, GM and other companies have test cars that get great mileage, but they have much bigger problems on hand right now to focus very much on this subject, like unions, competition, layoffs, and closing factories, etc.

And besides, how soon are we going to be able to convert all the gas stations to hydrogen or some other fuel?  (hint: there's a lot of them)

P.S.  Don't get me wrong... I know that combustion exhaust is worse than water vapor.  I'm just pointing out that ANY waste on a scale concurrent with our current consumption is likely to cause big problems.

It seems like reducing consumption and searching for alternatives to cars for everybody are necessary additions to any plan for saving the earth from people.

 

Well, that would make a lot of sense.

Can't be the way it works, though. It's too logical.

There's got to be a catch.

{edit: Oh, I bet I know.  They have to use gigantic amounts of fossil fuels to extract the hydrogen, right?}

 

 

  I guess these guys are waste their time then http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

The infrastructure is already being laid out. I don't know the exact number of hydrogen stations out there, but I know they exist. There's one or two in Vancouver and a few in California that I know of specifically. It won't be like flipping a switch, but they will become more and more common as the years go by.

As for water being the exhaust, it's easy enough to recycle it instead of putting steam into the atmosphere. Fill up your water bottle from the exhaust.

I view the scenario as analogous to gaming systems. When a system first comes out, it costs an arm and a leg(most of the time anyway). Even though it costs the user an arm and a leg, it's costing the company an arm and a leg as well, since they can lose up to a few hundred per console per sale. It also doesn't have many games, upgrades, or accessories available. What few games it does have are by no means system sellers. A few people always buy the system because of vanity. The ability to say they bought it on launch day. Or perhaps they're taking advantage of new features for a system(the PS2's DVD player was a huge factor in tossing the formerly beloved VCR out the door).
This is rather equal to the few environmentalists who will purchase these cars just because they are available. By purchasing the cars, they create demand for fuel. Not much demand, but some. Because this early infrastructure has been set up by supply and demand, it allows the costs of the system to go down. It convinces other companies to make games for them(set up hydrogen stations). Much like a processor goes down in price, so too does anything mass manufactured(cars get cheaper).

Now considering the price difference(not to mention the overall customer targetting) between a gaming system and a car, it's obviously going to take a lot longer for the hydrogen cars to start rolling off the assembly lines like SUV's do today in comparison to a gaming system setting up a stable user base. In a decade there will maybe be one or two hydrogen fuel stations in every major city. A decade or two after that and it'll have become mainstream.

So while the idea of filling up your tank with water could speed up the process significantly, it will happen fairly cheaply in the long run anyway. It doesn't cost much when you take little steps. It can even make you money, since by the time the 200,000th system sells off the shelf the gaming company has started to make a profit on their system instead of selling at a loss.

Welcome, naghtyvampiregod.

When you have a few minutes, we'd love it if you'd hop over to the  General Conversation, Introductions and Humor forum and introduce yourself.

And for the record, 0-60 in 10 seconds SUCKS. It's MUCH worse than the most lumbersome passenger vehicles on the market.

Could it possibly be that the main attraction to hydrogen in the majority's mind is that it is cleaner (or so they think) and hydrogen is cheaper than truly clean alternatives, thus providing a good market for business to look into (after all, businesses live on growth); the wide recognition of how unclean hydrogen would be devastating for this market, thus causing the death of a growth opportunity if no other similar technology is cost effective enough. The major media may decide to not cover this aspect of the story due their ownership by a corporation that may have ties to this kind of research.

Hydrogen is used in a limited fashion in petrol refinement, but that does not make making H2 clean or efficient.

Did you even read what I wrote?

NO way of producing hydrogen is energy effiecient - it ALWAYS takes MORE energy to make H2 than the H2 can provide - no matter how you make it.

Whether you crack fossil fuel or go the even more energy intensive route of electolysis, you will be putting more in than you get out.

Unless the energy you are putting in is essentially clean and essentially free (and it is not, not now anyway), powering the world with H2 is insane.

The only clean way to make H2 is to crack water, which is even MORE energy intensive than cracking hydrocarbons. If the energy you use to crack that water is derived from fossil fuels, what are you gaining? Nothing, in fact, you're digging a deeper hole.

Making H2 from water from hydro or nuclear or wind or solar power would be cleaner than what we do now, but that's NOT the sort of infrastructure we have in place. It would be impractical and inefficient to replcace such.

Oil refineries can easily make the switch to ethanal or biodiesle production, without us having to build nuke plants or develope fusion. Solar and wind power generation is frankly not capable of supplying the power we would need to make such a switch, not now or in the very near future anyway.

This is not the case for things like oil or natural gas, etc. 

I'm not speaking in a "religious" manner here, this is MY industry. I'm heavily involved in developing new technolgies for alternative fuels, sequestering emmissions, etc. This is what I do for a living. I'm being frank about what the actual energy costs are, how things are actually produced and what is actually feasible given the current infrastructure.

No, it is NOT, if you get the energy to make the H2 from fossil fuel, which is typically the case. I ANY case, there is ALWAYS a net energy LOSS - you WILL put MUCH MORE energy into making the H2 than the H2 will produce, especially when compared to the alternatives like traditional fuels, ethanol, bio-D, etc. As an engineer without a limitless no cost fuel source, that makes me cringe. It should make you cringe too. It's just a bad idea.

Fuck yes it is. Pay attention.

 

 And what do you think THAT would cost? Are you really this thick? You have NO concept of the economics and technology involved?

 

That's right, my opinon is based solely on me cock sucking the oil industry. You're clueless. You really are.

Grats, you understand the concept of limitied supply. What you don't seem to understand is what is involved in making major technology transitions.

It will run out, in the long term. In the mean time, we can find more efficient and cleaner ways of using it until a truely economic clean alternative comes along. This simply makes sense, and H2 is not a good alternative in this scenario for the reasons I've already posted.

Reducing emissions and making current technology cleaner is a much more feasible, immiediate and logical course of action in the mean time. This would involve, for example, supplying oxygen enriched air to coal power plants (coal is a ridiculously adundant resouce that powers most of the US and other countries like Austrailia) to gain efficiency and reduce emmissions. We could supply nitrogen enriched air to diesle engines to do the same thing. We could even sequester at least part of the emmissions we do produce. These are technoligies and others like biofuels I'm personally working on, and they are promising, economical, and easily implemented in the existing infrastructure.

Using H2 as a fuel source is NOT cleaner, is NOT economical, and would require revamping current tech and infrastructure to a ridiculous degree. It is NOT a viable alternative today or in the very near future - period.

What did you not understand about that?

Again you miss the point. Solar and wind are decades out before they could be implemented on a large enough scale to make a difference.

We are much better off working with what we already have while these other technologies reach maturity.

No shit. It ISN'T going to run out tomorrow or in the next decade or two though. The question is what do we do in the mean time?

We sure as shit don't start mass producing cars that run on H2. We start with hybrids that make better use of the fuels we already use. We start with making what we already do cleaner and more efficient. We start with what we already have.

This is the only way to approach the situation in a logical and economical fashion.

While we do that, we continue to work on fusion, we continue to make solar cells more efficient and economical.

We don't scrap what we already have for pipe dreams and unproven technologies. 

And when will this technology reach maturity? When it does, if it does, by all means, fire up the hydrogen cars.

Until then, it is insanity to assume this is anything more than an interesting alternative that may be available in 50 years or so. What do we do in the mean time?

Petrol is running out, it isn't running out tomorrow. There is no need to act like Chicken Little here. The sky may be falling, but it's going to take a long time to impact.

The problem must be approached in a logical and economical fashion. H2 does not fit that picture today. Get back to me in a few decades. 

Are you insane? You talk as if changing the way the world powers itself is a simple manner, if only money weren't an object. Money IS a object though. Economics MUST be considered here, as well as the time it would take to make such a transition and the fact that what we'd be transitioning to is not a mature technology.

If wind or solar or H2 were economically viable compared to fossil fuels, we'd have a hell of a lot more companies using and selling power from said sources. We don't. This should tell you something.

It takes time for a technology to prove itself and become economical. When Ford rolled out his first motor cars it took decades for people to give up their horses.

You don't seem to have a realistic concept of how technolgy is implemented or the practical considerations involved.

Corn, sugar cane, wood, pretty much any organic matter.

That is a concern, but considering how much land we really do have and how much organic material we simply landfill when we could turn it into fuel, it does become a realistic and logical interim solution.

Have you any idea of the area solar arrays would require to replace existing coal fired power plants?

Space is something we do have an adundance of now, but like anything else, it will eventually be at a premium - just the the petrolium you keep reminding me is running out.

Time is what we need though. Time to develope truely clean and truely economic alternatives. Time to let these technologies mature.

I never said we shouldn't work to develop it, quite the opposite. I said we shouldn't implement it until it is economical and feasible to do so - that will be when the technology is mature and proven. 

 

My patience is running out.

Ugh. I'm looking to the future to obviously, but I'm more concerned with tomorrow than 100 years from now. I can do something about tomorrow, today.

We need to be thinking about the short term and the long term at the end of the day, and I am.

Great to hear they are making progress. Shall we twiddle out thumbs in the mean time?

In 100 years, I'd hope we'd have fusion, but I'm not going to count on it. Until we have a truely clean and limitless power source, I thin we ought to work dilligently on making what we DO have better and cleaner.

I'm all for working to devolpe things like fusion, but we need to be practical in the mean time.

Ethanol or biofuel was never proffered as a permanent solution. It is, however, something that can do us a lot of good in the next 50 years or so. It is easy to implement, uses the infrastructure we already have, and is pretty economical - what's not to like?

Yes, but I don't think you appreciate the magnitude of said problem or the reality of the situation.

I love how even you point out it's going to be decades in coming. What do you suggest we do in the mean time? And you say my head is up my ass?

No, sir. Reread my original post. All I did was point out the shortcomings of H2 as of today. I never suggested that we should no continue to work of things like fusion and H2, I mearly said that we have decent, economicl, and easily implemented alternatives at hand while we wait for the panacea - if it ever comes.

I'm not a fan of waiting.

For fuck's sake, when did I ever ignore the fundamental problem?

You saw me bashing H2 and you went on a tirade without realizing who you were speaking to or fully understanding my position.